“Fortune [Tyche] our saviour [G]oddess,I pray your guardian care for Himera,And prosper her city's strength. For your hand steersThe ships of ocean on their flying course,And rules on land the march of savage wars,And the assemblies of wise counsellors."

It is of interest to note that ephesia grammata were discovered at Himera (Sicily) and that lead tablets containing the ephesia grammata were discovered at Selinous (Sicily) prominently featuring the name Τύχα/Tyche:

“In tablet N the noun Τύχα appears indented from the left margin of the tablet and it has been engraved in bigger characters, as if it were a kind of title or heading. The edition of tablet A asserts that the noun Τύχα is also emphasized by the size of the letters…” (Tracing Orpheus, “Τύχα in Two Lead Tablets from Selinous (OF 830),” by Raquel Martin Hernandez, Universidad Computense de Madrid, p. 311-312)

Pausanias (9.39.5-13, trans. Jones) describes the procedure to inquire of the “oracle” of Trophonios, who was nurtured by Demeter. (The name Trophonios means feed, rear, nurture. He is the legendary builder of the first temple of Apollo at Delphi.) The inquirer “first lodges in a certain building for an appointed number of days, this being sacred to the good Spirit and to good Fortune [Tyche Τύχη].” After the inquirer’s descent to the “oracle,” which Pausanias describes in detail, the inquirer is carried back to the building of Good Fortune [Tyche] and Good Spirit. http://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias9B.html

William Smith in his Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) gives a detailed description of the "oracle" of Trophonios in Boeotia and says, “Pausanias says that the Hercyna rose in a cavern, from two fountains, close to one another, one called the fountain of Oblivion and the other the fountain of Memory, of which the persons who were going to consult the oracle were obliged to drink.” http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0064:entry=lebadeia-geo

[2] Artemis is the immortal Goddess of independence. (Her hunting skills, virginity, and role in childbirth are emblematic). Artemis of Ephesus is associated with the Great Mother who first tamed/castrated bulls for agricultural purposes. It should be noted that the ephesia grammata are named for Ephesus, where the great temple to Artemis was located and where the Ephesia festival was held in her honor.

Come, with blessings, to mystae[22] full to bursting, eternally rejoicing.

[1] Diodorus of Sicily (4.4.7) says of Dionysos that “Many epithets, so we are informed, have been given him…he has been called Baccheius from the Bacchic bands of women who accompanied him, Lenaeus from the custom of treading the clusters of grapes in a wine-tub (lenos), and Bromius from the thunder (bromos) which attended his birth; likewise for a similar reason he has been called Pyrigenes (“Born-of-Fire”). Thriambus is a name that has been given him, they say, because he was the first of those of whom we have a record to have celebrated a triumph (thriambos) upon entering his native land after his campaign, this having been done when he returned from India with great booty…”

[2] In the classic sense, “manic” means to become a medium (μ) of the divinity, in this case Bacchos, the immortal God of wine and its effects.

[3] Diodorus of Sicily (4.4.2) states that Dionysos “was the first to attempt the yoking of oxen and by their aid to effect the sowing of the seed, this being the reason why they also represent him as wearing a horn."

[4] The Lenaea is a festival of Bacchos held in the month of Lenaion (January) to celebrate the pressing of the grapes, lenaie (ληναῖε). The festival included dramatic contests where a goat (tragos) was sacrificed, hence the term “tragedy.”

“The poet who wished his (sic?) play to be brought out at the Lenaea applied to the second archon, who had the superintendence of this festival as well as the Anthesteria [February]…and who gave him (sic?) the chorus if the piece was thought to deserve it.” Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, p.364, William Smith, Harper & Bros, New York, 1843.

[5] Bacchos is fire-seeded because Zeus’ lightning incinerated Bacchos’ mortal mother, Semele, while she was pregnant. Zeus sewed the fetal Dionysos into his thigh to complete gestation.

In Nonnos’ Dionysiaca7.136, Semele has a prophetic dream regarding the birth of Dionysos:

“She had brushed away from her eyes the oblivious wing of sleep, and sent her mind wandering after the image of a dream with riddling oracles. She thought she saw in a garden a tree with fair green leaves, laden with newgrown clusters of swelling fruit yet unripe, and drenched in the fostering dews of Zeus. Suddenly a flame fell through the air from heaven, and laid the whole tree flat, but did not touch its fruit; then a bird flying with outspread wings caught up the fruit half-grown, and carried it yet lacking full maturity to Cronion. The Father received it in his kindly bosom, and sewed it up in his thigh; then instead of the fruit, a bull-shaped horned figure of a man came forth complete over his loins. Semele was the tree!

“The girl leapt from her couch trembling, and told her father the terrifying tale of leafy dreams and fiery blast.”

As Jane Ellen Harrison writes in Themis (p. 91), “In Greece a place that was struck by lighning became an ἄβατον [abaton], a spot not to be trodden on, unapproachable. On the Acropolis at Thebes were to be seen, Pausanias [IX.12.3] tells us, the bridal chambers of… Semele—and even to his day, Pausanias adds, no one was allowed to set foot in the chamber of Semele.”

In Euripides Bacchae 238-241 (translation Herbert M. Howe in Classical Myth by Barry B. Powell, Prentice Hall, New Jersey 2001, p. 261.), Pentheus doubts Semele’s story of giving birth to Dionysos by Zeus, saying:“‘That fellow, they call him Dionysus?That’s the one Zeus once sewed up in his thigh?The one who was vaporized by thunderboltsAlong with his mother, self-styled “bride of Zeus”’?”

It is interesting to note that in Oregon, a mountainous state in the U.S., grapes grow more prosperously after mild fires, suggesting that perhaps the Dionysos fire legend reflects agricultural practices: "The percent cover of Oregon-grape was greater after prescribed spring and fall fires in 1973 compared to a control site on the Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming [127]."http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/shrub/berrep/all.html

When lightning strikes a row of grape vines, re-growth will begin at the base of the vine. This is a type of “natural” pruning. Pruning grape vines results in a better yield. (p. 22 What is Killing my Vines? Plant Failure in New Vineyards, Bill Cline, Plant Pathology Department North Carolina State University Horticultural Crops Research Station Castle Hayne, NC)http://www.smallfruits.org/CoAgentTraining/Sept06Training/No6Part2_vine_death_14sep06.pdf

Diodorus of Sicily (3.62.10) offers an alternative explanation for the myth, saying that the tradition that Dionysos “was born twice of Zeus arises from the belief that these fruits also perished in common with all other plants in the flood at the time of Deucalion, and that when they sprang up again after the Deluge…the myth was created that the [G]od had been born again from the thigh of Zeus.”

[6] Nysia is the name of several mountains sacred to Dionysos/Bacchos. The word means “turning-point,” “starting point,” or “finishing-post,” consistent with Bacchos as a God of transitions and his transformative effect in producing enthusiasm (ἐνθουσιασμός, God within) and ecstasy (ἔκστᾰσις, standing outside of oneself).

[7] It is interesting to note that the word “μηρο” not only means “thigh” but also means “that which is drawn out,” so that μηρο may pertain to the crushing of the grapes to draw out their juices and the “Zeus’ thigh” legend is a play on words.

[8] The liknite is a broad basket used for threshing grains and also as a cradle. “Threshing (ἀλοάω)” is the process by which grains are tossed into the air to blow away the “chaff (ἄχῠρον).”

[9] Both infants Dionysos and Demophon (Homeric Hymn to Demeter) were subjected to fire.

[10] A mitra is either a type of girdle worn in battle or a ceremonial head-dress worn as a badge of rank at the Ptolemaic court and by the victor at the games.

Diodorus of Sicily (4.4.4) says that “in order to ward off the headaches which every man (sic) gets from drinking too much wine he bound about his head, they report, a band (mitra), which was the reason for his receiving the name Mitrephorus; and it was this head-band, they say, that in later times led to the introduction of the diadem for kings.”

[11] A thyrsos is a pinecone-tipped, ivy-twined staff carried by Bacchos and his devotees.

[13] Diodorus (3.63.3--3.64.3 relates the following beliefs pertaining to Dionysos, as though “Dionysos” was the name of three separate deified men:

“The most ancient Dionysus was an Indian, and since his country, because of the excellent climate, produced the vine in abundance without cultivation, he was the first to press out the clusters of grapes and to devise the use of wine…(and) whatever pertains to the harvesting and storing of these fruits…Now this Dionysus visited with an army all the inhabited world and gave instruction both as to the culture of the vine and the crushing of the clusters in the wine vats (lenoi), which is the reason why the [G]od was called Lenaeus…

“The second Dionysus…was born to Zeus by Persephone, though some say it was Demeter. He is represented by them as the first man to have yoked oxen to the plough, human beings before that time having prepared the ground by hand…And as a special symbol and token the painters and sculptors represented him with horns…showing forth the magnitude of the service which he had devised for the farmers by his invention of the plough.

“The third Dionysus, they say, was born in Boeotian Thebes of Zeus and Semele, the daughter of Cadmus.”

[14] Bacchos was raised in secret to protect him from the fury of Zeus’ wife, Hera, the Goddess of air and wind.

[15] “Dios” is a generic term for divine power, used to pertain to Goddesses, Gods, and nobility. It is very often reflexively, and not necessarily accurately, translated as “Zeus.”

[18] Dionysos’ followers (most often depicted as female) become ecstatic as they become one with the God of wine, singing and dancing and losing inhibitions. The prolific depictions of Bacchian “maenads” in art bely the purported life of secluded Greek women (as do the tales of Artemis and her band of female hunters as well as the widespread role of women as priestesses and Olympian judges.)

Diodorus of Sicily (4.2.3) reports that “in many Greek cities every other year Bacchic bands of women gather, and it is lawful for the maidens to carry the thyrsus and to join in the frenzied revelry, crying out ‘Euai!’ and honouring the [G]od; while the matrons, forming in groups, offer sacrifices to the [G]od and celebrate his mysteries and, in general, extol with hymns the presence of Dionysus, in this manner acting the part of the Maenads who, as history records, were of old the companions of the [G]od.”

[20] Bacchos’ two mothers may be Semele and Zeus (gestated in his thigh); or Semele and Persephone (Diodorus of Sicily 4.4.1, Nonnos Dionysiaca 6.155

[21] Diodorus of Sicily (4.4.3-4) says that “on his [Dionysos’] campaigns he led about with himself a multitude of women who were armed with lances which were shaped like thyrsus…when he went abroad he was accompanied by the Muses, who were maidens that had received an unusually excellent education…”

- Helios (Ἡλιος, God of the Sun),- Selene (Σεληνη, Goddess of the Moon)- Eos (Ηως, Goddess of the Dawn); mother of the Gods of the winds: Zephyros (Ζεφυρος, fertilizing west wind), Boreas (Βορεας, north wind), Notos (Νοτος, stormy south wind), and Euros (Ευρος, east wind)

Phoibe (Φοιβη, Goddess of Prophecy) and Koios (Κοιος aka Πολος, God of the North Pole of Heaven); the parents of:

- the Moirai (Μοιραι, Goddesses of Fate)- the Horai (Ὡραι, Goddesses of the Seasons and the natural time for things to occur)- the Nymphs (Νυμφαι, Goddesses who prevail over particular locations in nature)

Krios (Κριως, God of the Ram/Aries/Spring equinox and new year)

Iapetos (Ιαπετος, God of Mortality); the father (by Asia Ασια) of:

- Atlas (Ατλας, God who holds up the sky; father of the Pleiades (Πλειαδες) and Hyades (Ὑαδες) constellations; and father of the Hesperides (Ἑσπεριδες, Goddesses of the Sunset))

- Prometheus (Προμηθευς, God of Forethought who created the human race by mixing earth and water (Hesiod, Theogony (126-138))).

According to Barry Powell, “The Titans, whatever their origins, came in general to represent the untamed forces of nature. Their offspring were the seas, rivers, and heavenly bodies.” (p. 94 Classical Myth Prentice-Hall, New Jersey 2001)

The Titans battled with the Olympians in the Titanomachy (Τῑτᾱνομᾰχία) (battle of the Titans), as described by Hesiod:

“They battled continually with one another, their spirits pained with distress, for ten full years; nor was there any resolution for their grievous strife nor an end for either side, but the outcome of the war was evenly balanced.

“…they all roused up dismal battle, the females and the males…both the Titan [Goddesses and G]ods and those who were born from Cronus [the Olympians]

"…The boundless ocean echoed terribly around them, the great earth crashed, and the broad sky groaned in response as it was shaken…And in this way they hurled their painful shafts against one another; and the noise of both sides reached the starry sky…

“Then Zeus no longer held back his strength, but at once his breast was filled with strength and he manifested his full force. He strode at the same time from the sky and from Olympus, relentlessly hurling lightning bolts, and the thunderbolts, driving forward a sacred flame, flew densely packed, together with the thunder and lightning, all at once from his massive hand. All around, the life-giving earth roared as it burned, and all around the great immense forest crackled; the whole earth boiled, and the streams of Ocean and the barren sea. The hot blast encompassed the earthly Titans, and an immense blaze reached the divine aether, and the brilliant gleam of the lightning bolt and flash blinded their eyes, powerful though they were. A prodigious conflagration took possession of Chasm; and to look upon it with eyes and to hear its sound with ears, it seemed just as when Earth and broad Sky approached from above [sexually] for this was the kind of great sound that would rise up as she was pressed down and as he pressed down her down from on high—so great a sound was produced as the [Goddesses and G]ods ran together in strife. At the same time, the winds noisily stirred up shuddering dust and thunder and lightning and the blazing thunderbolt, the shafts of great Zeus, and they brought shouting and screaming into the middle between both sides. An immense din of terrifying strife rose up, and the deed of supremacy was made manifest.

“And the battle inclined to one side…

“They sent [the Titans] down under the broad-pathed earth and bound them in distressful bonds after they had gained victory…far down beneath the earth as the sky is above the earth…

“That [Tartarus] is where the Titan [Goddesses and G]ods are hidden…They cannot get out…

“That is where the sources and limits of the dark earth are, and of murky Tartarus, of the barren sea, and of the starry sky, of everything, one after another…a great chasm, whose bottom one would not reach in a whole long year, once one was inside the gates, but one would be borne hither and thither by one distressful blast after another—it is terrible…

“That is where the children of dark Night have their houses, Sleep and Death…

“That is where, in front, stand the echoing houses of…powerful Hades and of dread Persephone…

“That is where the [G]oddess who is loathsome for the immortals, terrible Styx…lives…

“That is where the marble gates are and the bronze threshold, fitted together immovably upon continuous roots; and in front, apart from all the [Goddesses and G]ods, live the Titans, on the far side of the gloomy chasm.”

Diodorus of Sicily says the Titans were from Crete near Knossos “at the place where even to this day men point out foundations of a house of Rhea and a cypress grove which has been consecrated to her from ancient times.” He says they were born of Ouranos (Sky) and Ge (Earth), or, alternatively, of “the Curetes and Titaea, from whom as their mother they derive the name they have.” (5.66.1-2)Kronos “introduced justice and sincerity” and the people of Kronos’ reign “were good-hearted, altogether guileless, and blest with felicity” and all his subjects “lived a life of blessedness, in the unhindered enjoyment of every pleasure.” (Diodorus of Sicily 5.66.4-6)

Diodorus describes the beliefs of the Atlantians regarding the Titans, saying that to Ouranos “were born forty-five sons from a number of wives, and, of these, eighteen, it is said, were by Titaea, each of them bearing a distinct name, but all of them as a group were called, after their mother, Titae. Titae, because she was prudent and had brought many good deeds for the peoples, was deified after her death by those whom she had helped and her name was changed to Ge.” (3.57.1-2)

Clement of Alexandria, a Christian (200 CE), says the Orphics believed that the Titans, coated with white gypsum as a disguise, tore the infant Dionysos (God of wine) limb from limb and boiled and roasted the pieces of his body. When Zeus (God of lightning) saw what was going on he incinerated the Titans with a thunderbolt. (Protrepticus 2.15) Diodorus (5.75.4) also says that “Orpheus has handed down the tradition in the initiatory rites that [Dionysos] was torn in pieces by the Titans.” Jane Ellen Harrison dismisses any connection between the Hesiodic Titans and the Orphic tale as patently “late and fictitious.” (Prolegomena, p. 493-494)

Diodorus (3.62.7-8) explains the Orphic belief in the slaying of Dionysos by saying the tearing limb from limb is the grape harvest, “and the boiling of his members has been worked into a myth by reason of the fact that most men (sic) boil the wine and then mix it, thereby improving its natural aroma and quality.” Diodorus says that the restoration of Dionysos to his former state “shows forth that the vine, which has been stripped of its fruit and pruned at the yearly seasons, is restored by the earth to the high level of fruitfulness which it had before…And with these stories the teachings agree which are set forth in the Orphic poems and are introduced into their rites, but it is not lawful to recount them in detail to the uninitiated.”

Other Orphic myths report that Zeus created humans from the ashes of the Titans.

Considering that the Titans are the Goddesses and Gods of the Sun, Moon, Stars, Clouds, Winds, Ocean, Rivers, Fountains, Beauty, Inspiration, and Grace, the compulsion among some writers to disparage the Titans as evil and to claim they are imprisoned beneath the earth seems odd.[2] Gaia is the immortal Goddess of generative earth.

[2] Diodorus of Sicily (4.4.3) (trans. Oldfather) writes that Dionysos “was accompanied . . . by a personal attendant and caretaker, Seilenus, who was his adviser and instructor in the most excellent pursuits and contributed greatly to the high achievements and fame of Dionysus." http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Seilenos.html

Silenos is considered an elder “satyr.” Satyrs are depicted as men with horns and a tail who live a drinking, carousing life in the wilds.

Coins from circa 600 BCE feature a naked Satyr or Seilenos with the hooves, ears and tail of a horse who seizes a woman round the waist.Jane Ellen Harrison in Prolegomena, p. 380 argues that Satyrs and Centaurs are depicted with the legs of a horse to indicate wild men who ride on horseback.

Note that atyranneutos (άτῠράννευτος) means arising above tyrants, free from tyrants, so that Saturos (Σάτῠρος) could be translated as “synchronized above tyranny,” descriptive of the lifestyle of one who lives in the wilds and mocks the establishment. Sillos (σίλλος) is a “satirical” poem or lampoon, mockery, something silly. Sillographeo (σιλλογρᾰφέω) is satirical poetry.

[3] The Horai are the immortal Goddesses of the seasons, the natural time for things to occur, the Hours. Triennial may refer to the three seasons: Spring, Summer, Winter; or to a triennial festival that occurs every third (every other) year.

[7] The Lenaia was an Athenian and Rhodian festival held in the month Lenaion (Gamelion/January) in honor of Dionysos at which there were dramatic contests.

A circe 450 BCE drinking cup depicts a procession and dance of maenads, also known as Lenai. The women hold the thyrsus and dance to the music of the double flute. (Staatliche Museen, Berlin; 2290).

Peter Swallow in “Reconstructing the Lenaia” writes that, “We may also be able to assign an additional ritual to the Lenaia, a ritual which, interestingly, seems to have been solely for women. The evidence for this is dependent on a series of vases indicating Dionysian worship; aptly named the Lenaian Vases. These vases are adorned with a myriad of different, if not dissimilar images variously portraying women dancing and making music, women drinking and pouring wine from a stamnos, women holding thyrsoi, and images of satyrs. There seems to be two distinct types: black-figure lekythoi from 490-80 [BCE], which show women in an ecstatic state, and red-figure stamnoi from 460-50 [BCE], focused on the pouring of wine; many of this type were found in Etruria (Hamilton 2003, 49). Other divisions have been made. However, the unifying feature of all of them (or at least those we can be sure fit into this group) is the inclusion of a pillar adorned with a mask of Dionysus, around which the portrayed ritual is focused.” http://www.theposthole.org/read/article/314

Many scholars say that Semele is the Phrygian Goddess Zemele, the Goddess of earth, and many also identify her with the Great Mother Rhea-Kybele because the uproarious rites of Semele’s son, Dionysos, closely resemble the ecstatic rites of the Great Mother.

“Some scholars have thought that Semele’s name, certainly non-Greek, is the same as Semelo, a Phrygian name for the Great Goddess attested on inscriptions.” (Classical Myth by Barry B. Powell, Prentice Hall, New Jersey 2001, p. 272)

“(Dionysos) is the son of the Phrygian Earth-[G]oddess Zemele, who in the Greek Olympian theology became Semele…so that the Cretan Rhea displaced the Thraco-Phrygian [G]oddess, Zemele” (The Ancient Gods, by E. O. James, p. 166-167)

“…who and what is Semele?...The Phrygian ζεμελω [zemelo] is the Greek γῆ [ge] (earth)…Semele, mother of Dionysos, is the Earth.” (Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of the Greek Religion, Princeton, New Jersey, 1991, p.404)

Jane Ellen Harrison in Themis, p. 168 writes, “The Earth is barren till the Thunder and the Rainstorm smite her in the springtime—till in his Ephiphany of Thunder and Lightning Keraunos comes to Keraunia, the Sky-[G]od weds Semele the Earth, the ‘Bride of the bladed Thunder.’”

aka Zemyna, Earth Goddess (Lithuania) “From late seventeenth-century sources (as described by Praetorius in Lithuania Minor in 1690), we hear that a black suckling pig was offered to Zemyna (as it was to Demeter in Greece) during the harvest feast presided over by a priestess.”Gimbutas, Marija; Miriam Robbins Dexter (2001). The living goddesses. University of California Press. pp. 208–209.ISBN978-0-520-22915-0.

[4] Semele is the mortal mother of Dionysos, the immortal God of wine and its effects. While pregnant Semele was consumed by flame when Zeus came to her as the God of lightning. Zeus sewed the fetus of Dionysos into his thigh to complete gestation.

As Jane Ellen Harrison writes in Themis (p. 91), “In Greece a place that was struck by lighning became an ἄβατον [abaton], a spot not to be trodden on, unapproachable. On the Acropolis at Thebes were to be seen, Pausanias [IX.12.3] tells us, the bridal chambers of… Semele—and even to his day, Pausanias adds, no one was allowed to set foot in the chamber of Semele.”

In Nonnos’ Dionysiaca7.136, Semele has a prophetic dream regarding the birth of Dionysos:

“She had brushed away from her eyes the oblivious wing of sleep, and sent her mind wandering after the image of a dream with riddling oracles. She thought she saw in a garden a tree with fair green leaves, laden with newgrown clusters of swelling fruit yet unripe, and drenched in the fostering dews of Zeus. Suddenly a flame fell through the air from heaven, and laid the whole tree flat, but did not touch its fruit; then a bird flying with outspread wings caught up the fruit half-grown, and carried it yet lacking full maturity to Cronion. The Father received it in his kindly bosom, and sewed it up in his thigh; then instead of the fruit, a bull-shaped horned figure of a man came forth complete over his loins. Semele was the tree!

“The girl leapt from her couch trembling, and told her father the terrifying tale of leafy dreams and fiery blast.”

It is interesting to note that in Oregon, a mountainous state in the U.S., grapes grow more prosperously after mild fires, suggesting that perhaps the Dionysos fire legend reflects agricultural practices: "The percent cover of Oregon-grape was greater after prescribed spring and fall fires in 1973 compared to a control site on the Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming [127]."http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/shrub/berrep/all.html

This is a type of “natural” pruning. Pruning grape vines results in a better yield.

In Euripides Bacchae 238-241 (translation Herbert M. Howe in Classical Myth by Barry B. Powell, Prentice Hall, New Jersey 2001, p. 261) Pentheus doubts Semele’s story of giving birth to Dionysos by Zeus, saying:“‘That fellow, they call him Dionysus?That’s the one Zeus once sewed up in his thigh?The one who was vaporized by thunderboltsAlong with his mother, self-styled “bride of Zeus”’?”

[5] The thyrsus is the pinecone-tipped staff associated with Dionysos.